Jeffrey Morris
Below and attached (whichever works for the list serve) is an op-ed or blog piece on garbage and biomass incineration/combustion/gasification that could be of interest to readers. Comments are welcome, as well as suggestions for where I might publish it.
Jeffrey Morris, Ph.D.-Economics
Sound Resource Management
2217 60th Lane NW
Olympia, WA 98502-0903
Garbage or Biomass Incineration/Combustion/Gasification Warning Labels
Garbage or biomass incineration/combustion/gasification should come with warning labels similar to those on other products or services that present potential threats to public health and environmental safety. Based on US EPA air emissions data and analyses, as well as air emissions data from Europe, and taking into account the differing heating values of fuels and materials, these warning labels should caution that:
§ Wood or garbage combustion/gasification emits toxics and carcinogens at the same levels as coal combustion and at much higher levels than natural gas combustion.[i]
§ Combustion/gasification of garbage emits fossil carbon greenhouse gases (from plastics and rubber in garbage) at close to the same level as coal, and double the level of natural gas.[ii]
§ Combustion/gasification of wood entails carbon emissions that are only completely re-sequestered after hundreds of years of forest re-growth.[iii]
Furthermore, the levels of heavy and transition metals in garbage are very much higher than with conventional fuels, and their levels in woody biomass and wood wastes (even “clean” wood wastes) are much higher than in natural gas, and at least comparable to their levels in coal. Thus, the risks of nanoparticle pollution from garbage or wood combustion/gasification are much greater than from conventional household and industrial fuels such as natural gas.
These facts should give us pause when we read claims that garbage or biomass combustion/gasification is clean or green or renewable or sustainable. There are other facts about garbage and biomass combustion/gasification that should be considered as well in deciding whether burning the energy out of garbage or biomass is beneficial.
For example:
§ It takes energy equivalent to eight to ten barrels of oil to make the products in a ton of garbage.
§ Recycling materials and products in garbage conserves four barrels worth of energy.
§ Combusting garbage produces one barrel of energy.[iv]
This indicates that a more profitable investment from a societal point of view for our scarce monetary and energy resources is expanding recycling and composting rather than constructing new garbage combustion/gasification facilities.
Another example – hauling logging slash and woody debris from the forest floor to a biomass conversion facility may avoid some of the pollution from open air combustion of this biomass on site. Yet consider these other factors:
§ Wood combustion/gasification facilities typically are closer to population centers than are forests, so health risks from their emissions will fall on more people.
§ There will be flora and fauna habitat disruption and destruction when woody debris is removed from the forest floor.
§ Science proves that the removal of woody debris from forests has a diverse impact on the species that are dependent on woody biomass for their existence.[v]
§ The supply of logging slash and forestry floor wood may turn out to be insufficient to feed an efficiently-sized combustor, and this will lead down the slippery slope from woody debris recovery to tree thinning to forest clearing to supply the combustor/gasifier with its needed fuel.
Clearly, less environmentally risky sources of energy such solar, wind, and geothermal should be pursued well before we turn to garbage or woody biomass as energy sources. We have better uses for these resources than burning for heat. Did I hear someone say, “Zero waste recycling!”?
[i] Sources: US EPA AP-42, Fifth Edition, Compilation of Air Pollutant Emissions Factors, Volume 1: Stationary Point and Area Sources, Chapter 1 – External Combustion Sources and Chapter 2 – Solid Waste Disposal (available at http://www.epa.gov/ttnchie1/ap42/ ); AECOM Canada Ltd, Management of Municipal Solid Waste in Metro Vancouver – A Comparative Analysis of Options for Management of Waste After Recycling, June 2009, graphs on pp. 90-91 (available at http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/solidwaste/planning/Thenextsteps/SDD_3_AECOM_FULL_REPORT.pdf ); and Sound Resource Management Group, Inc., Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Waste Management Strategies with a Zero Waste Objective – Study of the Waste Management System in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, June 2009, Section 3: LCA Results for Base Case Scenario, pp. 18-31 (available at http://www.belkorp.ca/Dr_Morris_Report.pdf ).
[ii] Based on existing WTE facilities, West Coast waste composition data, and Sound Resource Management Group (2009), op.cit, Figure 3.5 on page 24.
[iii] “…, for a given amount of CO2 released today, about half will be taken up by the oceans and terrestrial vegetation over the next 30 years, a further 30 percent will be removed over a few centuries, and the remaining 20 percent will only slowly decay over time such that it will take many thousands of years to remove from the atmosphere.” US Federal Register -- Part III Environmental Protection Agency, 40 CFR Chapter 1 Proposed Endangerment or Cause and Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(A) of the Clean Air Act; Proposed Rule, Vol. 74, No. 78/Friday April 24, 2009/Proposed Rules, page 18899.
[iv] Morris, Jeffrey, Recycling Versus Incineration: An Energy Conservation Analysis. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 47 277-293, 1996.
[v] Siitonen, Juha (2001). Forest Management, Course woody debris and saproxylic organisms: Fennoscandian boreal forests as an example. Ecological Bulletins 49: 11-41.